The present invention relates generally to a library system comprising a plurality of drive modules and printing labels for cartridges, and more specifically, to a library system comprising an integrated label printer inside the library system instead of a drive module. The invention relates further to a method for integrating a label printing drive into a library system.
Typically, magnetic tapes are used as long-term storage media and/or for data archiving purposes. Magnetic tapes are typically enclosed in standardized cartridges. In order to differentiate the cartridges by optical pattern recognition, printed labels are typically applied to the cartridges. The labels may be human-readable and/or machine-readable. In typical cases, the label contains a volume serial number and a barcode that the library system can read. Typically, various vendors generate these labels, and end-users manually place them on the cartridges. Even if the labels are specified in quality categories, the machine readability and longtime stability of the labels vary from vendor to vendor. Issues with reading a label (and thus, identifying a cartridge) may be time-consuming and can lead to a situation in which data on the magnetic medium may not be available for users. Thereby, business continuity for enterprises may be endangered. This may be especially critical if users have to perform restore operations instead of supporting the continuous operation.
Additionally, the manual replacement of the labels onto the cartridges is not only time-consuming but also error prone. Different users may apply the labels on different cartridges in different ways, which makes machine readability more difficult. Furthermore, labels from different vendors are not standardized, having different material characteristics, such as reflectivity, and durability of the printed code on the label.